


Can't Stand Up From Falling Down

by fullborn



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: Ableist Language, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, gordon is bi(polar), it's mentioned that gordon has more issues than just brain damage and i wanted to explore that, not too angsty though (i think), of course gordon coping methods are terrible, set during the beginning of s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 19:50:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17855882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullborn/pseuds/fullborn
Summary: "Sometimes he thinks that out of all the stipulations of Donna’s marriage-sustaining deal, having to see a psychiatrist is a great deal more humiliating and inconvenient than being emotionally blackmailed into spending a few million on his wife’s company and moving across the country. He knows he’s being dramatic but he can’t help it."Gordon gets another diagnosis.





	Can't Stand Up From Falling Down

**Author's Note:**

> So a version of this has been in my drafts for like a year, but I just picked it up again recently. It's heavily implied that Gordon has something going on beyond the CTE and I think the symptoms for bipolar fit in with his overall characterisation. I did a lot of research but I acknowledge that if there's anything lacking in my approach to the illness it's 100% my bad. 
> 
> Halt and Catch Fire is such a small fandom that I hope there are at least a few of you that enjoy this! I binge read radomizer's Fade Into You yesterday so I'm still riding the wave of love I have for all these characters. Comments very appreciated!

It’s on days like this that Gordon actually misses the ridiculous support group he attended back in Dallas. It had been easy to sit and watch the rest of them carry out their neurotic song and dance; a lot of the time he could pass an entire session without saying anything, and if it came down to it, he was pretty good at deflecting. That’s something Dr. Ortega — _Ricky_ — comments every other week. Gordon sits and fiddles with the loose stuffing spilling from a chair worn down by countless anxious, distracted fingers, and thinks how in the old therapy group if you focused on the AIDS poster behind Barry’s head it looked as if you were paying rapt attention. Here the only thing behind _Ricky_ is a pretty tasteful cacti arrangement. 

Sometimes he thinks that out of all the stipulations of Donna’s marriage-sustaining deal, having to see a psychiatrist is a great deal more humiliating and inconvenient than being emotionally blackmailed into spending a few million on his wife’s company and moving across the country. He knows he’s being dramatic but he can’t help it. 

‘Gordon, are you hearing what I’m saying?’ says Dr. Ortega and Gordon stops wadding the armchair stuffing into tiny balls and looks up at the tip of the tallest cactus poking out behind his psychiatrist’s perfectly gelled head. 

‘What? Yeah I’m listening: that questionnaire thing from last week.’ 

_(How often do you have difficulty concentrating on what people say to you, even when they are speaking to you directly?)_

‘DSM-III. I remember. You were saying?’ He’s filled out so many mood charts, multiple choice forms, journals, drawn little pictures it’s hard to keep track.  

‘Obviously your CTE is a main contributing factor for many of your recent mental symptoms,’ says Ricky. ‘But I think that, from what you have shared and from what your wife talked about in your joint session along with your previous physician’s report, it’s more than that. From before any significant advancement of neurological damage.’

NONE OF THESE WILL GIVE YOU AIDS

working together

going to lunch 

sharing a hug

‘What?’ says Gordon. He can’t remember the next item on the AIDS checklist — _touching a doorknob_ is definitely last.He’s bouncing his knee like he needs to take a piss but he doesn’t, it’s a reflex; he wants to get out of here and back down to the Mutiny basement where he can work in peace.

Dr. Ortega leans forward and his hair catches the light like an oil slick. His eyes are very dark, but kind. 

‘It’s not a diagnosis that I come to lightly, and I’d advise that you seek out a second opinion if you have any doubts. I wanted to make sure. There’s a great overlap with the symptoms of CTE, but I believe that you suffer, quite separately, from… ‘

He’s still talking but the air has kind of stopped going into Gordon’s lungs and he’s finding it hard to listen over the blood pounding in his ears. _Using a restroom._ That’s the next one on the poster: he can see the illustration of the open toilet, stark and uninviting. And there’s the mush of his brain, any hope of future stability of mind finally and completely disappearing down the drain. The two words _Bipolar Disorder_ rattling inside his skull like twin earrings in a u-bend.

 

* * *

 

 ‘Have you seen Gordon?’ asks Donna as she breezes into the kitchen. Cameron freezes, caught in the act of stealing one of the low-fat fruit yoghurts Gordon keeps stacked at the back of the fridge. ‘Uh, no,’ she says, pitching her voice like she isn’t guilty of pilfering from him.

‘He’s usually back by now,’ Donna says, kicking off her shoes and neatly arranging them under her chair. ‘Actually he’s late.’ The clock on the wall points to 6 - his appointment is at 2.30 and lasts an hour. Even with traffic he should have been home for a while — and she was only noticing now. _You’re a terrible wife_ , she tells herself but it’s self-indulgent at best.

Cameron shuts the fridge with an elbow. ‘Where even is he?’ She doesn’t seem too bothered as she snags a spoon and starts to dig into Gordon’s exclusive dairy stash. 

‘Oh, just, you know,’ says Donna and absently crosses to the phone. The number for the office is in her purse and it takes a while for her to find it among the debris of makeup tubes, wires strippers and other useful tools that make it in there. The secretary picks up after two rings. 

‘Hi this is Gordon Clark’s wife, Donna? I was wondering if he made it to his 2.30 appointment.’ 

The voice on the end of the line is chipper and local. ‘Let me check - yes, I marked him in. Is there a problem? Dr. Ortega has just gone out but I can leave a message if you’d like.’

Donna feels the panic that has been suppressed since her husband’s diagnosis twisting in her gut. _What if he had some kind of turn? What if he got confused? What if he passed out while driving?_ She swallows and says, ‘This is going to sound weird but could you check if his car is outside? It’s a minivan.’

‘Um, ok? Give me a sec.’ There’s a clatter as the mouthpiece hits table, the sound of high heels on a hard floor. Donna focuses on steadying her rising chest until the echo of her breathing down the line sounds less laboured. ‘There’s a Volkswagen van in the parking lot,’ comes the secretary’s voice and Donna’s heart sinks. ‘Apart from that it’s just my car and Dr. Humboldt’s.’ 

‘Thank you,’ says Donna and hangs up. How far could Gordon get without the car? She realises Cameron is watching her across the kitchen island and knows that she is coming to some sort of judgement, or unsolicited view of the Clark marriage. 

‘Is everything…alright?’ asks Cameron, uncharacteristically hesitant, and that’s when the girls burst into the kitchen.

‘What’s for dinner?’ whines Haley while Joanie chants ‘Pop-tarts! Pop-tarts!’ like a miniature dictator. In this moment her children seem like an alien invasion — Donna is stuck in her own imaginings, trying to read Gordon’s mind while the girls have only one thing to consume their specific focus. Incredibly, it is Cameron who steps in. 

‘You know,’ she says, waggling her eyebrows, ‘your mom and I were _just_ saying that we should get Chinese for dinner. Does that sound good or what?’ Haley gasps, ‘Yes!’ and her sister grins. ‘Even though it’s a school night?’

‘ _Especially_ though it’s a school night,’ says Cam. ‘You guys need variety, have to keep on your toes otherwise you’ll turn into boring zombies.’ She raises her arms and rolls her eyes and the girls giggle. Haley screams with laughter as Joanie chases her out of the room, the two of them moaning and shuffling like the undead. Cameron lowers her arms and looks to Donna. ‘Is that okay? It looks like you need a break.’ 

‘Thank you,’ sighs Donna, pressing a hand to her forehead. ‘I don’t think I can deal with all this right now. Can you order?’

‘Yeah of course,’ Cameron says, rifling through the stack of tacky take-out menus by the phone. ‘Do you, uh, want me to get something for Gordon or…?’

There’s a pause as Donna leans over the counter and closes her eyes. ‘I don’t think he’s going to make it for dinner,’ she says finally, and as she says it she knows that she’s right. ’But you can get him the sweet and sour pork anyway.’ _Even if he shows up in the middle of the night,_ thinks Donna, _he’s going to eat that stupid meal._ It’s better than the alternative where the food sits in the fridge for days and he never comes home at all.

 

* * *

 

He looks up at the towering billboard with its apocalyptic message and begins to laugh. He’s been walking for hours; it’s half dark now where he stands on a street corner in South Berkeley and the red glow of the sign asking ARE YOU SAFE? is so insultingly inopportune that he can’t help the wild feeling bursting out of his chest. He laughs so hard he has to bend over and clutch at his knees. The street is empty, but to any passerby he must look, well…like he’s lost his mind. That thought sets him off again and he laughs until the tears are running down his face. _Are You Safe?_ What a joke. 

A car full of college kids drives by and they lean out and yell something at the crazy guy laughing at nothing but he doesn’t hear what. He straightens up, makes eye contact with an old lady smoking on her balcony across the street. She raises an eyebrow and puffs her cigarette into the night, then turns and slides the door to her apartment shut. It leaves him strangely lonely, under Joe MacMillan’s words personally taunting him and his shitty brain. The manic feeling ebbs. Some guy with his arm slung out the window of a dinged Oldsmobile pulls up at the traffic lights, and calls casually, ‘What’s your deal, man?’

Gordon hiccups. ‘I’m fucking crazy, I’m losing my mind.’

The guy nods like he knows all about it. ‘Solid. Keep it weird.’ Two guys in the back roll down the window, showing more skin and jewellery than necessary for a casual Tuesday evening. ‘Come on baby,’ calls the darker of the two, popping the consonants. ‘Get in. Where we’re going, everyone’s a little crazy. Why, it would be crazy if you weren’t crazy!’ 

His friend laughs like a hyena and the driver shrugs, pops open the passenger door. Gordon feels so unmoored that this small action seems like a lifeline in a sea of indifference, and, sanity be damned, he gets into the car. There’s a part of him (the one with Donna’s voice) telling him to go home but he can’t face it, another conversation that will drive a wedge between them. 

‘I’m fucking crazy,’ he says again, voice cracking, and the two beautiful bejewelled men in the backseat cheer and take it up as a chant, so exuberant and full of life that they just might live forever. Future spreading out for miles.

 

* * *

 

He’s too wrapped up in his own thoughts to realise that they’ve arrived at a party until they’ve gotten out of the elevator and entered a penthouse apartment with an incredible view of the bay. The place is packed, and the young man who has been introduced to him as Moonpie tugs him into the vibrant throng by the wrist. Someone brushes by covered in as many feathers as a flamingo and just as colourful. _What am I doing here?_ thinks Gordon. He should be in bed, back to back with Donna. 

‘I like your moustache,’ a man yells over the throbbing beat of the music, and Gordon is too distracted by his fake eyelashes to choke out anything smoother than a _thanks_. Moonpie clutches his arm and says, ‘Back off Reed, we found him so he’s ours.’ Reed shrugs and saunters off into the party. Moonpie leans in confidentially and whispers, ‘He’s probably riddled. If he asks you to follow him into the restroom, best say no if you know what I mean.’

‘You can’t get AIDs from using a restroom,’ says Gordon dumbly. He feels like his tongue has turned to toffee; the words stick in his mouth. Moonpie laughs and pats him on the cheek. ‘Can get plenty of other things.’ A waiter in fishnets passes by with a tray of canapés and this reminds Gordon that he hasn’t eaten, and by extension hasn’t taken his medication this evening. ‘Shit,’ he mutters. ‘I’ve got to…get a drink.’ 

He wanders off to find a quiet corner after promising to bring Moonpie a mojito. There’s laughter and dancing but the words _bipolar bipolar bipolar_ are a bass drum under everything. How long has he been fucked up? Gordon sinks into the empty space by a cabinet with the most intricate Japanese vase on top, and fumbles for his pills. He taps them into his hand and dry-swallows, and across the room the driver meets his eye and winks. He pretends he hasn’t seen and looks out to the balcony — for a moment he sees a tall Gatsby-esque figure propped against the rail, gazing out at the city — but he blinks and the man is no longer there. It unnerves the hell out of him, to think of whether or not he was hallucinating, but for a second the figure had made him think of Joe. 

A few minutes or maybe hours after this he finds himself lying on the floor with his head in a leather-clad lap. Someone stroking his hair. ‘What did you say, honey?’ says the owner of the hand. 

‘I said, do you know what bipolar disorder is?’ asks Gordon with his eyes screwed tight against the lights and the noise. 

‘No man, I don’t. Want me to suck you off?’

‘It’s like manic-depressive you know? I’ve got it. Like a goddamn see-saw, up-down up-down, apparently. I’m nuts.’

‘Hey now, half the folks in here are like that,’ says the man stroking his hair. ‘You just roll with it, get the help you need, and try not to be a total dick about it. It take your mind off it if I suck you off?’

‘Oh my God,’ says Gordon and sits up. ‘You’re right. I’m being a total dick about it.’ He turns to the man, who has his shirt open to his waist and is clearly stoned. ‘Thanks, but I’ve got to go.’

‘All right, I get it,’ says the man, who has the bluest eyes he’s ever seen. He leans in a plants a whiskery kiss on Gordon’s cheek. ‘Good luck, brother. You got this.’ 

Gordon feels his face flushing as he gets to his feet. ‘You too. I, uh, I’ll see you around then,’ he says, and makes for the door. The sun is coming up over the city as he steps out the high rise and onto the street. If he catches a taxi he can get to Mutiny and still be early for work.

 

* * *

 

Cameron puts both hands on the board room table and taps her fingers expectantly. ‘So, uh, shall we start then?’ It’s weird to start their morning meeting without Gordon but, business is business and someone has to act like they haven’t been up all night worrying about their husband. ‘Anybody?’ 

Donna looks pale and wan in the morning light, and she yawns against her hand as Cameron raises her eyebrows. ‘I suppose we might as well go ahead. Although…’ Donna pauses and flicks through her notepad. ‘Gordon might have some notes downstairs, just so we know how the hardware updates are going. Unless you want me to take the morning to go through what he’s been working on?’ 

‘Ugh,’ groans Cameron. ‘It’s not your job, Donna. If, by some magic, he writes things down then all well and good, if not, let’s skip the hardware discussion and spitball some ideas. We don’t have all day.’

‘Give me five minutes,’ says Donna, and leaves.

At the end of the table Bos stretches like an old watchdog and rubs his head. ‘I feel like an extra ballsack here. You want a coffee?’ He directs the last part at Diane who smiles and says, ‘I’ll come with you.’

They leave Cameron in the empty meeting room, where she sits, fuming. The part of her that’s not pissed at Gordon for disappearing off the face of the earth is secretly pleased; it’ll be a nice change to have her and Donna in a room again, like the old days, innovating — except for that, she needs Donna to emerge from the basement with her head in the game. Her partner has acted distracted all morning, as if Gordon wasn’t a grown man who could take care of himself. 

Cameron sits for a few more moments, then gets up and tramps to the basement stairs. Her boots are heavy and she takes the steps with extra vigour to highlight how annoyed she is. For once, Donna _If You’re Not Early You’re Late_ Clark is the one holding up proceedings and Cameron feels very self-righteous. ‘Donna!’ she calls, ‘It’s been waay more than five minutes. If you’re skiving off work we’re going to have to have pretty serious talk about professionalism — _Oh._ ’

Cameron stops halfway down the stairs, completely stalled by the scene below. Sure, there is Donna…but also, Gordon? Not that she pays much attention but he is definitely in the same clothes as yesterday, and even worse, he’s crying. Donna crouches in one of the mainframe aisles, her hand on his shoulder, reaching out placatingly as if towards a spooked horse at the rodeo — the ones that freak when their riders are thrown. Gordon sits slumped against the machines shaking under her placating hand. It’s a scene that is much too personal and intimate, and it is way beyond her pay-grade. Sure, living in the same house there’s the ever constant fear of hearing them…doing it…but this is somehow worse. More intimate. Like flipping over a rock to find something exposed, belly gutted. Like her mother holding Cameron’s hair back as she threw up into the toilet. She’s never even seen Gordon cry before.

Cameron must have let out a strangled noise of surprise because Donna looks up and meets her gaze sharply, mouth thinning with a frown. Her earlier frustration has melted away; she looks worried, tired. Deep hollows resting under her eyes. She shakes her head, saying _Not Now_. Cameron doesn’t need telling twice — she is already retreating towards the safety of the emotionally stunted coder-monkeys above. Whatever marital-type problem is going on down there in the quiet of the basement, it is _not_ her business. 

As she goes to tell Diane and Bos that their meeting is going to have to wait, the disturbingly helpless sound of Gordon crying keeps popping back into her head. It’s so viscerally wrong that she doesn’t think she can bear to look at him in the eye ever again. _No,_ she tells herself, shaking off her pity for Gordon Fucking Clark. _Fuck that._ She thinks of Donna, worried, on the phone. He could have called. No matter what happened.

 

* * *

 

The dull shock of coming downstairs and finding Gordon hunched over the 3033 console like he’d been there half the night is still hard to overcome as Donna holds her husband, who is very much alive and shaking in her arms. She regrets now how she had hissed, ‘Gordon? What the hell?’ as he turned, guilty and looking worse than she did. His eye sockets were a bruised purple and his hair was sticking up in tufts.

‘ _Donna,_ ’ he had said, and to her horror he had begun to cry. And here they were, she slightly bewildered and he wiping his eyes on his unbuttoned shirt cuff.

‘Gordon,’ she says, sitting down properly on the floor beside him and taking his hand. ‘Do you want to explain, maybe, what this is all about? You really scared me. You’re scaring me right now.’

He clears his throat and leans his head back against the mainframe. When he speaks, his voice is flat and just a little bit wobbly. ‘I saw Dr. Ortega yesterday.’

‘I know. His secretary said you left the van there.’

‘It seemed like an okay idea at the time. I, uh, he said that…he said that there’s something else. Apart from the CTE. Wrong with me, that is.’ She’s aware that she’s holding her breath but she can’t help it, and she squeezes his hand tighter as he continues. ‘He said that I’m bipolar. Manic-depressive.’

She lets out the breath she’s been holding and tries not to sound like she is holding back tears. ‘Oh, honey.’ She can’t think what else to say. ‘Thank you for telling me.’ Because he didn’t, the last time. ‘I mean, remember what Dr. Semel said back in Texas? He said that maybe there was something…beyond everything else.’

She hears him swallow. ‘I know,’ he says. Just, I think I hoped it was the CTE.’

It’s a lot to take in but she is his wife; she can’t disappear for an entire night to process this new life changing information. ‘So we knew there was a possibility this could happen. Look, maybe, maybe this is a good thing.’ It feels like clutching at straws but as she says it she knows that it’s true.

He lets out a choked laugh. ‘It’s good that my brain is one kick-ass melting pot of disorder and illness? Yeah, it’s just great. I love it.’

‘No,’ Donna says, and it is good to feel exasperated again. ‘A diagnosis — this could help. Maybe more meds, more therapy, could really make a difference.’ She lets go of his hand and shifts her posture so she can look into his face. ‘Imagine a virus, it could take ages to isolate the issue and then develop a way to fight it. But, say if you know what kind you have…do you remember Elk Cloner?’

He sniffs. ‘Yeah.’

‘Well, if you _know_ you have an infected Elk Cloner floppy, then you know what your problem is: how to stop the virus from spreading or getting worse. So maybe knowing is good. Do you get what I’m trying to say?’

‘I _wish_ I had Elk Cloner. Then we could re-write my DOS.’

‘ _Gordon._ ’ 

‘I know what you’re saying. It’s just…the brain damage scares the shit out of me but this? This is like…How long has this been there? Dr. Ortega said that in some cases, neurological damage can cause other psychological disorders — but if it’s like what you said then maybe this has always been there. What bits of me are _me_ and what bits are _it_? Donna, what if —’ 

He’s breathing hard again so she leans in and hugs her. ‘It’s okay. Gordon, you’re okay. You’re you. This is just for looking forward, so we know what to watch out for.’ 

‘So you can tell people, “Oh don’t mind my husband, he’s acting like an asshole because of the illness.” What if that’s _me_?’

‘I’d prefer if you tried to not be an asshole at all times. And is that…glitter?’ she says, tugging at his shirt. He laughs half-heartedly and drags a hand over his moustache. 

‘I had a very weird night,’ he says, like that explains where he has been for the past eighteen hours. ‘A very nice man offered to give me a blow job and told me not to be dick. I don’t want to be a dick, Donna.’

She sits up sharpish and tries to tell if he’s joking, but he’s too tired to be joking. ‘Sorry, what?’ 

Gordon ignores this and continues on: ’Donna, you know I love you right? No matter how hard it is to be around me sometimes. All the time.’

‘I know. I love you too. Now, we _are_ going talk more later but you look dreadful. Take the car and go home, go straight to bed. I’ll call Melissa’s mom to see if she can pick the girls up. And then I’ll deal with Cameron.’

‘ _Oh God,’_ he murmurs, stricken and wide-eyed behind his glasses. ‘Did she…I think I’m going to die. Wait, how will you get home?’

Donna gets to her feet and pulls him up by both hands. ‘We’ll get a lift from Bos or one of the boys, honestly Gordon it’s fine. Just wait a few minutes after I go up and then head out; I doubt the coders will even notice you.’ He sways before her, red-eyed and so sad. She wraps her arms around him and he buries his face in her shoulder.

‘Donna. Thank you. I’m sorry.’

‘Just go straight home okay?’ she says, patting him on the back. ‘There’s leftovers in the fridge. I’ll call to make sure you get back in one piece.’ 

‘Okay,’ he says, and they step apart. She kisses him lightly on the forehead then heads upstairs before she can lose her nerve. Her last glimpse of him is forlorn: her ill husband dishevelled and exhausted hiding in the basement. She wipes her own eyes and steps into the bullpen, where the normal chaos reigns. This was just another new thing to take onboard the listing ship of their marriage, she told herself — and yet, as he had said it she had not been surprised. Like some part of her had always known; only now, they had the word. And that meant something.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t remember how he made it out of Mutiny without being noticed: he doesn’t remember a lot of things, as he is now learning. Learning the reasons for the patches of darkness in his memory and his brain matter. Donna slipped the keys to the estate car into his hands in the basement and he had then hooked the keychain so tightly around his index finger that it takes him much longer than is necessary trying to dislodge them. They drop to the tarmac, and as he stoops to collect them he imagines someone, maybe Bos, watching like a hawk from the office window overlooking the car park, thinking, _Gordon the son-of-a-bitch where does he think he’s off to?_ Watching him get into the car and flee the scene like some kind of petty criminal. 

The house is quiet when he gets there just after eleven. Barely any traffic, everyone else in work except the unemployed and the mentally disturbed. The emptiness of their home disquiets him as he stands in the kitchen, nerves jangling with over-tiredness. Keys in the bowl on the counter, jacket on the hook by the door. He pours a glass of water and downs it in one go. Pours another. 

By the time he makes it to the bedroom things are beginning to lose focus at the prospect of sleep, even the jagged spikes of unmoored emotion that had set him weeping at the touch of his wife’s hand. The memory ebbs as he gets into bed fully clothed. _Jesus,_ there had been Cameron, her mouth wide in a surprised _Oh!_ with her wide bug-eyed look of horror that would have been comical if he hadn’t been crying his eyes out. The whole thing was absurd. He yawns and buries his face in the pillow and tries to think of Cameron. It works. 

He wakes groggily, much later, aware only that his mouth is very dry and his glasses are pressing uncomfortably into the side of his face, and that there is someone standing in the crack of light through the open door. He rolls over, squinting until he remembers where he is and what time it is. ‘Haley?’

Her outline shrinks in the doorway. ‘I didn’t want to wake you up!’

‘Hey, it’s alright,’ he croaks with a mouth full of ashen sleep. ‘Who let you in?’

She approaches the bed and perches on the end, considering him. ‘Melissa’s mom dropped us off to Mrs. Fredricks and she gave us some lunch and the spare key. Where were you last night?’ She watches as he struggles to answer.

‘I, uh, wasn’t feeling so good. I didn’t want to come home and worry your mom.’

‘She was worried anyway. You don’t let us use the phone for very long, but she called a lot of different people and was asking them where you were.’ She is now at the end of the bed, so to better catch his expression.

‘I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to worry her.’

Haley flops forward and settles herself against his chest. There’s a pause as she nestles her head over his heart. Considering. ‘Are you sick?’ she finally asks. 

He feels something small and vulnerable dropping into his stomach. They had told the children, in as opaque terms as they could put it, that sometimes Daddy might not be feeling all that well, but not in a way that threatened any change or thoughts of illness. He strokes her hair and feels the knowledge that he loves her very much swelling in his ribcage. ‘Well sweetheart, I am sick. But it’s not like when you get a stomach bug or the flu, y’know, it’s not like that. It’s in my head, it’s…I guess you’d say that my brain is sick.’ 

She cranes her neck to look at him, a frown creasing her forehead as she examines his face. ‘Huh,’ she said, and kisses his cheek. ‘You’re all scratchy!’ She touches his stubble for a moment then bounces up, looking down with the surety of any medical practitioner. ‘If you’re sick you’d better get more rest and then drink some chicken soup, and maybe take some medicine.’ All these instructions lifted in essence from parental nagging at various childhood sickbeds. ‘And then you can feel better.’

‘Thanks, monkey.’ His voice cracks a bit.

‘I’ll tell Joanie to let you sleep!’ Haley says, and skips out the door with the prospect of bossing around her older sibling. 

When he next wakes up, it’s just after midnight according to the red numbers on the digital clock and Donna is fast asleep beside him. His stomach is rumbling with hunger, so he slips carefully out of bed and pads to the kitchen in his bare feet to get some cereal. He reaches into the fridge for milk and pulls the door shut to reveal Cameron looming in the dark like a pale, poorly-dressed ghost. She yelps as they make eye contact, clapping both hands over her mouth. He nearly drops the carton. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ he hisses, lowering his voice so they don’t wake anyone up. 

‘ _You_ nearly gave _me_ a heart attack!’ she counters, their usual polarity kicking in until they both remember the events of the morning and the image of Gordon crying settles like a brick wall between them. Cameron fidgets with her natty t-shirt like it's the most interesting thing in the world; it is so old it’s practically see-through, but that’s not the only reason Gordon feels the need to focus on pouring his milk while avoiding eye contact. The basement had been embarrassing enough but he thinks that if Cameron tries to ask about his wellbeing now when it’s clear she barely tolerates him he just might have to flee the room.

Instead she mercifully sticks out her hand for the cereal. They attend to their midnight snacks, and even though she is basically naked and he still looks like shit standing there in yesterday’s clothes, it doesn’t feel as weird as it should. Cameron lumps two spoonfuls of sugar onto her cornflakes. He raises his eyebrows at her. ‘That’s horrifying.’

She stirs in the sugar and ignores his remark. ‘Don’t dig it until you try it,’ she says, adding a lump to his bowl. ‘A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down and all that.’

He makes a face but eats the cereal anyway. They stand side by side and loudly crunch through their cornflakes, companionable chewing much better than conversation. Cameron turns and rinses her bowl in the sink and breaks the silence with her back to him. 

‘What happened is really none of my business,’ she says, swilling the milk and water around until it starts to overflow into the sink, ‘and I don’t want to talk about it.’ Gordon shovels the rest of his cornflakes into his mouth. Perhaps, he thinks a little desperately, if he chews loudly enough he can drown out whatever she’s going to say next. ‘Uh, but…Are you, like, okay?’

The moment stretches agonisingly as Gordon struggles with his cornflakes. Cameron scrubs her bowl with intensity, like it’s suddenly very important that she leave it absolutely spotless. 

‘That was too sugary,’ Gordon said as he finally swallows. ‘Kind of disgusting? I’m glad you haven’t corrupted the girls with your terrible taste yet.’

Cameron kills the tap, turns around and crosses her arms, shooting him a look that was somehow so _Donna_ in nature that it unnerves the hell out of him. They spend way too much time with each other, he decides as he tries to figure out how much to tell her.

‘You don’t have to tell me shit, if it’s you and Donna or what.’ Cameron says. ‘I mean just, as long as you’re not going to do something stupid. That’s all.’ It’s clear she ill-cut for this role but there’s something she wants him to say.

Gordon is at a loss. ‘What are you talking about?’

Cameron rolls her eyes in frustration; pastoral crap be damned. ‘You know!’ she says, ‘Donna was, really worried about you. Like…wondering if she needed to take a trip out to the Bridge level of worried.’ 

There’s a beat as her words land on Gordon like a slap, as he realises what she is trying to ask him. ‘ _Jesus_ , Cameron,’ he hisses. ‘What the - no. No, nothing like…She thought that?’ He buries his head in his hands. ‘ _Shit._ She didn’t say.’ What was he doing to his wife? He should have called. Cameron hovers at his elbow and for a moment it seems like she might pat him on the arm, but her hand drops and she stares at him in discomfort.

‘She didn’t say that out loud. She was worried. But you could tell she was thinking it.’

‘That’s not, that wasn’t it. Not at all.’ He presses his thumbs deep into his eye sockets; the pressure is momentarily relieving, different dots dancing across his vision like pixelated static. 

‘That’s good,’ she says levelly, like she’s afraid he’ll start crying again. ‘So, you’re okay? I mean, you’re —’

‘— Not going to jump of the fucking Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah.’ 

The silence is the longest stretch yet. Cameron has nearly pulled a new hole into her t-shirt by the time Gordon straightens up. He thinks about telling her, the feeling of yet another bad diagnosis, how it was like drifting further away from who he thought he was: where the idea of going home to his family and sitting down and having dinner and acting like everything was just fine instilled a kind of desperate panic. He could put it off. He could put the diagnosis off if he never said anything. But that had already been a disaster once. And he didn’t need to justify himself to her, not when they could barely hold a cordial conversation in normal circumstances. 

The kitchen, with its low light and hum of the fridge, strikes him as a liminal space - how else would the two of them be standing in companionable, charged silence in the middle of the night? Cameron stretches awkwardly, breaking the moment. ‘That’s good,’ she says again. ‘Just checking.’ 

‘Hey. Cameron,’ he says as she heads towards the hallway. She turns. ‘Um, thanks. For being with Donna. And for asking.’ 

‘No problem.’ She jerks her head in an affirmation that is almost a shrug, then vanishes into the hallway. Gordon hears the gentle sound of her door closing. There is sugar scattering the counter and he absently traces a line, two lines, a third. Later when he crawls back into bed, he wraps his arms around Donna with his forehead to her back. Holding on for as long as he can.

 

* * *

 

The return visit to Dr. Ortega’s is a whole lot more agonising than the previous one, which is saying something. Since, in Donna’s words, he had “ _not taken the news very well”_ she had made him call up the office to book himself in for an emergency session — which he discovers, involves assessing any risk he may pose to himself or others. And besides, he has to pick up the van anyway. 

‘You don’t like talking to me very much, do you Gordon? Who do you feel you _can_ talk to?’ said his psychotherapist with a meaningful expression. 

Gordon coughs. ’Hey, I’ve got no problem with you. And I talked to Donna about it yesterday, as well as some gay guy who really calmed me down, so it’s a lot better than it was. Than the last time, I mean.’ 

‘Right.’

‘Right.’ The session picks up as the hour progresses and Gordon leaves the room with a new prescription form and a whole bunch of pamphlets for Donna’s edification. ‘I’ll see you next week,’ calls Ortega, and Gordon pauses at the door to say jokingly, ‘Yeah, I’ll try not to kill myself till then.’

All in all he’s not feeling not too terrible, which lasts about thirty seconds from when he shuts the door. He turns around and there is Joe MacMillan, ridiculously hunched over the reception desk with a form before him, paused in mid-turn with his mouth slightly agape. ‘Gordon?’

He’s wearing glasses, and sweatpants, and he looks _good_. Gordon’s barely shaved and he’s still got an exhausted Victorian wanness to him that is not flattering. Worse of all, he’s remembering what Donna told him over breakfast this morning, in the lull between Cameron and the girls as Gordon poked at the leftover sugar on the counter: 

_‘So…I_ might _have called Joe yesterday and asked him if he’d seen you.’_

_ ‘What?’  _

_ ‘I didn’t know where you were! I’m sorry that I felt the need to exhaust all possible options. We didn’t talk long anyway, just hi and bye.’ _

_ ‘I’m suing the man; why would I be hanging out with him in the middle of a crisis?’  _

_ ‘I know, but you can’t say anything about rationale right now. That’s not what I meant. You know, you and Joe…you’ve got your own logic.’  _

_‘Ha ha. Thank you so much, dear. I’ll be sure to tell him in court.’_

And here he is, large as life, looking like Gordon interrupted him in the middle of shrug. He has his shoulders high and his hands jammed in his pockets. It’s excruciatingly awkward. Gordon closes his eyes and reflects that it is unlikely that he missed his parting shot with Dr. Ortega. _Great._ _Two seconds in and he thinks I’m suicidal._

He feels the heat flooding his face before Joe even opens his mouth to talk. ‘You: shut up,’ says Gordon, pointing a threatening finger. Poor Dorothy looks scandalised where she sits in her office chair.

‘Nice to see you too,’ says Joe, and his voice is milder than Gordon remembers. 

‘We’re going to get a drink: you’re not going to ask me any questions, I’ll not ask you about MacMillan Utility, and then we’re not going to talk until one of our lawyers says we need to. Maybe never,’ he says with a lot more authority than he feels that he has. Joe looks startled for a moment but then he nods. 

‘I’d be happy to.’ They leave the office together, and in unspoken agreement head towards the bar across the road. He feels that Joe is watching him as they walk but he’s too annoyed at himself to do anything about it. The bar isn’t a total dive and the beer on tap is pretty decent. They sit on stools at the bar, which is a whole lot better than having to sit across from Joe and have the conversation face-to-face. ‘It’s good to see you,’ Joe says, and he sounds so fucking genuine it makes Gordon’s skin crawl. 

‘Same to you and all that. You’re doing pretty well for yourself, climbing out of the proverbial and not so proverbial ashes as usual.’

Joe scratches his beard and takes a sip of his beer. He makes a small face and twists the glass in his hands on the bar. ‘So…out of the blue, Donna called the other night.’

‘So she told me. Hope she didn’t interrupt anything too important,’ says Gordon and he hates how bitter he sounds. Joe’s regarding him with an expression that just might be pity, or tenderness, and he doesn’t know which is worse but both make him want to hit Joe in the face.

There’s a long pause as they both stare at the silent television screen where Seve Ballesteros putts the ball and a bunch of boring people cheer. ‘I, uh, I’ve been seeing Dr. Humboldt for six months now,’ Joe murmurs. ‘It helps.'

Gordon takes a long pull on his beer. ‘I didn’t ask.’

‘I know. I wanted to tell you.’

‘Good. I’m glad. You seem to have it all worked out,’ Gordon replies. Dr. Humboldt, he knows, is more on the psychoanalytic scale of things and does not go around handing out prescriptions for psychotropic medication. He feels the paper in his pocket and resists the urge to ball the whole thing up in his fist. 

Joe’s barely halfway through his beer when Gordon drains his own glass. It’s not terrible, seeing him again but it feels weird and he knows he should feel more angry than he is. Gordon thinks for a moment, then asks, ‘Do you know this guy called Moonpie?’ 

The look Joe gives him can only be described as goggling. He chuckles and adjusts his glasses, says, ‘I didn’t know his gang had such a reputation.’

The beer is settling in Gordon’s stomach and he laughs as well. ‘Sweet kid. Kinda handsy though.’

Joe chokes on his drink and has to spit his mouthful of beer back into his glass. The two of them shake with laughter and then they lapse into companionable silence. Feeling too familiar. Gordon taps his feet on the barstool, checks his watch. ‘I’ve got to get to work. The madhouse doesn’t run itself you know.’ He winces at his own words as he gets to his feet, and claps Joe on the back. ‘I’ll see you at the proceedings, then.’

Joe gets to his feet, and for all his height looks oddly lonely. He offers his hand and Gordon takes it, palm enveloped in Joe’s steady grip, and they shake. 

‘Be well, Gordon,’ Joe says like a benediction. ‘It’s always good to see you. I hope you know that.’

‘Sure,’ says Gordon, and pulls his hand back into his pocket. Half of him wants to tell him the whole thing, the various messed up levels of his brain — but that would be an unearned intimacy that Joe long forfeited. So he zips up his jacket and gives his old partner a nod, says, ‘Till next time,’ and walks out of there without a backwards glance like a coward. Leaving Joe to swill his beer and watch the door swing shut behind him.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) III was published in 1980. It's come a long way since then (we're currently on DSM-5) and while by no means perfect it shows the changing language about Bipolar Disorder at the time - up until recently referred to as Manic Depression. The inclusion of subtypes bipolar II and rapid cycling only became included with DSM-IV in 1994.
> 
> \- The AIDS awareness poster is based off a very real example.
> 
> \- Elk Cloner was a boot sector virus that was released as a prank in 1982, spreading on Apple DOS through infected floppy disks - not malignant but pretty contagious! 
> 
> \- Joe in season 3 is definitely doing something along the lines of going to therapy - is there only one such place in the whole of SoCal? Yes. 
> 
> \- I'm currently rewatching S2 so if there might be timeline discrepancies for the period I'm writing in - I'm sure I'll get to S3 and realise they ditched the Volkswagen in Texas or some other annoying inconsistency ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed!


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